American Commandos is another trashy film made by Robert Mitchum's non-famous son, Christopher. Mitchum plays a guy whose wife is raped and son killed by criminal goons. His wife's trauma is too much for her to bear and she takes her life soon afterwards, leaving him bereft and gunning for revenge.His vengeance takes him to the infamous Golden Triangle where he joins forces with fellow macho man John Phillip Law to take the fight to the drug lords themselves. What follows is your typical Filipino-made action movie, chock-full of shootings and explosions and not much in the way of sense.There isn't much in the way of gore here but there's plenty of sleazy nudity from unknown actresses for exploitation purposes. Mitchum and Law barely break a sweat as the bullets fly and there's a general lack of effort and coherence all round. It's pretty much the norm for Filipino cinema.

"They're in a rage for justice!" American Commandos is an interesting hybrid of two favorite B-action genres: the revenge movie and the back-to-Vietnam tale (with a bit of the old "ragtag team" thrown in for good measure).Chris Mitchum plays Dean Mitchell (I know, quite a stretch), the one gas station attendant you don't wanna mess with. He's a taciturn Vietnam vet who doesn't say very much. When some stupid baddies DO decide to mess with him, they end up in a world of hurt. They try robbing his beloved gas station, and then they go after his family. Big mistake. Chandler, Speck and Buck (the evildoers' names) live to regret the day they went after him. So ends the Death Wish (1974) section of the film.When "The Man" also known as Brady (Ken Metcalfe) who works for the government, gets wise to Mitchell's technically-unlawful revenge methods, he leverages that against him so that he can send Mitchell to the "Golden Triangle" to destroy a drug operation there. He literally asks them to "blow it up". Radical! ("You don't have a license to kill anymore" Brady tells Mitchell. Mitchell disagrees.) So he teams up with his old buddies Kelly (Law), Brutus (Robert Marius), Somsak (Guerrero of the Richard Norton classics Kick Fighter (1987) and Cross Fire (1988)) and Creeper (Williams). They have an awesome tank, much like the one in Bulletproof (1988) (But in this movie no one gets called a "Butthorn" - make of that what you will) that has missile launchers, hidden guns, cool armor and a space for a motorbike to bust out! Will this team survive not just the countless amounts of people shooting at them, but all the twists and turns in the plot as well? We love Chris Mitchum. He closely resembles his father and also shares his trait of being a man of few words. It's a good antidote to the overly-verbose post-Tarantino movies of today. The character of Creeper dresses in sleeveless beer shirts (Olympia and Budweiser) or no shirt at all. He also has some cool slang (Why you payin' cool green for a snap job?"). Speaking of cool clothes, John Philip Law - another one we always love seeing - has an extremely awesome T-shirt that simply says "AMERICA RULES!" I guess that's for when he goes to foreign countries so the baddies know who to shoot at.So while the movie is an entertaining time, with the revenge movie section, the Golden Triangle section where they shoot millions of thugs and attempt to dismantle the heroin operation (all this when they're not getting numerous "massages" at the local whorehouse run by one of the heroes), there is one scene in particular that stands out - the one that is REPEATED! Yes, probably by accident, about an hour into the movie we see the same scene twice. Literally. This editing-room mistake makes for some laughs and extends the running time quite unnecessarily. It's really weird.So if you want some kind of cross between Death Wish and Codename: Wildgeese (1984) starring some familiar faces, you'll surely like American Commandos.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

The ever enjoyable to watch Chris Mitchum headlines in this rather confused Indonesian outing which appears to have at least initially the exact same plot as Arizal's absolute classic, Final Score (again starring Mitchum). But wait......whilst the first half of the film follows the story of our man taking revenge on the scum who murdered his wife (although she technically takes her own life here) and child, about the mid way mark the plot suddenly takes a somewhat dramatic turn and we find Mitchum and his old Vietnam buddies going into the Golden Triangle to destroy the entire Heroin network!!!!!! What the hell?!!!!Well, let's be honest, for fellow bad movie lovers such an abrupt and delightfully illogical plot contrivance renders the film as simply glorious straight away. Add to this the plethora of highly enjoyable and completely OTT action scenes throughout and sure enough, this is indeed a highly entertaining, little known gem of a film.Check out especially the scenes in which our hero's drive into battle in their A-Team style, souped up armoured truck. Not only has this baby got hidden weapons seemingly all over it, but it also houses a compartment in the back wherein Mitchum drives out on a rocket launching, bullet proof motorbike! Woah!!!Good wholesome B-movie fun!

This movie's full of holes and chock full of badness like all B-movies, but this one's different. Perhaps it's just the video I was watching (probably not), but the movie actually repeats a 5 minute section of the movie back-to-back. So when the bad guy says go to plan B he says it twice. So is the second plan B actually plan C or maybe B2?